In 1977, at the height of the British punk movement, the former drummer of England"s greatest band released Ringo the 4th, a dinosaur-rock artifact if there ever was one. "Drowning in the Sea of Love" was the album"s lead-off single, but drowning in a sea of L.A. session cats is more like it. Severely overproduced by Arif Mardin, the album pits Ringo"s old brown shoe of a voice against a phalanx of backing singers (including Bette Midler, Luther Vandross, and Melissa Manchester) and a hyperactive horn section. Without any Beatle mates to bail him out, the songs are almost uniformly dire, though the cover of "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley" almost works. The album (which failed to chart on either side of the Atlantic) produced no hits whatsoever; at this point, Ringo"s career and personal life were rapidly spiraling out of control, and the glory days of the Fab Four seemed very far away, indeed. --Dan Epstein